BUSHELL ON THE BOX
Jan 30 2026. The Apprentice returned with a strange promo campaign – ‘the hustle is on’, ‘hustlers gonna hustle’, ‘hustlers gonna rise’ etc. Had BBC1 forgotten that hustlers are con artists who specialise in long cons? I know that because Hustle ran for eight series on, um, BBC1… Either they meant hagglers or they were just admitting that this clapped-out reality format is one long con-trick. It’s all fake! The opening credits show the Shard, the Gherkin and formerly Canary Wharf when the show is shot in North Acton and Lord Sugar’s real boardroom is in Loughton, Essex. But the biggest fib is the idea that the 20 candidates – including an estate agent, a dancer, some woman from Geordie Shore and a midwife with a letting agency – are “Britain’s entrepreneurial elite” when they’re just the usual mix of deluded big-headed berks and Love Island lookalikes. One puffed-up buffoon boasted he’d made his first million by the age of 25, failing to grasp the difference between turnover and profit. Besides the tasks have nothing to do with business acumen. They opened with the usual ‘send the twerps abroad to buy nine items they’d never heard of’ ruse. In reality, you would just google “a golden pineapple” or slip a hard-up local student a few bob to take you to the right place to buy shrimp paste etc. It’s not a business challenge; it’s a badly organised shopping trip.
This was a pricey opener for the show’s 20th series. The Beeb channelled Race Around The World to export the teams to Hong Kong (at our expense) when they could have failed equally spectacularly in Aberystwyth for a fraction of the cost. “I don’t think you could find a sofa in DFS,” snorted the grumpy old lord. Probably true, some of them look like they’d struggle to find their own backsides in a coal mine. Soon they will inevitably face a pointless cooking challenge, as if that were any guide to entrepreneurial ability. Imagine, “We like your ideas for Tesla and SpaceX, Mr Musk, but your Black Forest gateau was baked to death – you’re fired.” The girls got hopelessly lost. And, at one point, sub-team leader Georgina Newton burst into an improvised promotional song on the spot for a local business: “Glocal Mahjong is where it all began”. It was understandably awful, but poor, doomed Georgina was right in one respect. The only business The Apprentice involves these days is showbusiness.
The format creaks like Sugar’s jokes. Could it be saved? Possibly. But not by hiring pretty wannabes or Z-list celebrities. Why not hire real hagglers instead? Del-Boy-style market traders, Lovejoy-style antique dealers, car salesmen, band managers and talent agents? And set them real challenges instead of daft sub-Generation Game larks like make-an-amateur-DIY-promo-film against the clock. Then the sparks might fly again.
PS. The new stripped-down, sub-Traitors, podcast-style BBC2 after-show is awful. Get rid! And as for the bloke who boasted, “My first car was a Tesla, my second a Porsche”, let’s hope his next ride is in the show’s black cab of failure.